There comes a time in each broad-based community action where the necessary changed behaviors have to be envisioned, designed, supported and guided by all sectors of the community and not just those community members willing to sit around committee tables.  In fact, the earlier in the process that this realization occurs and is acted upon, the more likely true transformative change can take place and be sustained.  Because fundamentally success is driven by changing behaviors (habits) across the community.

Many collective impact initiatives stumble at this point.  Usually because they take the eye off a fundamental dictum of working differently: its all about the outcome.  Instead, blame for prior bad behaviors creeps in and the discussion falls back into accusation or constraint ("we can't achieve the goal because these people won't __________________.")   

This point of transition to community action to support changed behavior can turn into a cul de sac of blame or shame unless there is crisp focus on the desired outcome.  To minimize this from occurring, I think the key is "loose-tight."  That is, you want people to be creative and feel they own the work but you also want to be prescriptive enough that the result is far closer to the transfer of action to the community versus lowered expectations or more committee work.

Using parent engagement as an example:  the goal is not shaming or blaming -- assume a proper intent; i.e., those parents you are going to move DO care deeply about their children and either don't have clarity as to what they need to do or have impediments (like two jobs or negative feelings about education from their own experience).  Therefore, the community actions - to be outcome focused - need to be about moving those two "drivers" of suboptimal behavior.  Here are examples from several communities that maybe relevant:

- Employers agreed to give parents time-off to go to parent/teacher meetings or at the minimum go to the phone if the school calls about their child.

- Schools have understood that some parents first met failure at the school (sometimes the very building where their children are).  Thus they have been open to meet parents at a "neutral" setting: community center, etc.

- Employers (and other gathering place for parents, like stores and churches) have provided books for parents to take home (or other supplies).  In some cases they modeled skills of how to read to their children.  If you were never read to, it could be very hard to know the best approaches for reading with your child.

- Use the K-ready checklist and other parent-tips in employee, church etc., newsletters.  Have them posted on community bulletin boards at the supermarket, etc.

- UWay's, CATs, Schools, Action Teams have provided "Checklist Classes" where best practices and skills are discussed about what parents can do to help move a child along the k-ready checklist.  We've seen these classes be done in employee break rooms, in church basements, and in vacant stores at the mall.

- Local Arts organizations have offered traveling Art Together classes where parents (many of whom were never introduced to even the rudiments like finger-painting by their own parents) are given the chance to "play" with their children.

- Some of the reasons why parents don't attend is as simple as child care.

All of the above assume a desire on the part of the parents and help either remove impediments or bring knowledge to parenting for which they have no role model.

Depending on your desired other "outcome community action areas," I think you and/or the Action Teams can think through a no blame - no shame approach to mobilizing community action. 

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I’m often asked: what is the most surprising aspect of your work with over 75 communities in their efforts to achieve better outcomes?

Whether it is a city, town, school, or district, what has surprised me most is that I have never had to talk a community down from too high an aspiration.  I have never felt the need to pull back the reigns because a community was getting their expectations too far ahead of their potential grasp.

Now this isn’t to ignore the sorry reality that communities often fail to achieve suboptimal results, but, as I have seen time and time again, that is a function of implementation and not of aspiration.  In fact, in my experience, those communities that tend to stretch the limits of expectation also tend to apply more rigor to their implementation, understand the need to reach across the community, and emphasize measurement planning because they intuitively know that this transcendent goal requires them, as a community, to get out of the “same ol’ same ol’” mindset of most past “community betterment” endeavors. 

We’ve talked about some of the potential speed bumps before (see my blog posting on “Traps”), and avoiding them is at the center of what I have called “Working Differently.”  Here is one simple suggestion to get your analysis off to a better chance to get to the “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” that Jim Collins underscored as a fundamental driver in those organizations moving from “Good to Great.”

SWOT v. SOART

Most of us, who have ever participated in or facilitated a strategic planning session, are very familiar with the warhorse of organizational analysis – SWOT.  Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.  The group would take several hours to fill several pages of flipchart paper with their assessment of community characteristics that fit under each of these headings.  I used the process for years.  It engendered a lively discussion and helped to get people with vastly different perspectives, biases or sector experience closer to being on the same page.

So far so good.   But over the years, I began to suspect that this very process was effectively lowering the horizon.  In the same way that a gun sight can be bent forward, SWOT tended to create a context where the ultimate shot was low.  Under achieving became self-fulfilling.

I think there are two dynamics at play here.  First, a community usually only opens itself for a “strategic” review when it already knows that it has problems.  An intuitive sense of community weakness is at the heart of the “call to action.”   This is anecdotally born out by the fact that usually the newsprint sheets labeled “weakness” often had significantly more entries and more unanimity than any of the other headings.  Second, “weaknesses” tend to give permission to the problem.  How many times have we heard something “outside our control” as the reason we have the problem – the why we can’t succeed.  Poor parenting: school outcomes.  Fast food: obesity health care.  Economic deterioration: pollution.  Media: teen pregnancy.  All of which, serves to confirm why we have the problem without serving to sufficiently guide us to the transformative solution. Even the 180-degree different strengths-emphasis of asset maps tends to fail in this development of a clear guide, because these asset maps are most often framed as activity resources from the problem perspective rather than from the solution point of view.  (Is it an asset to have more slots for early childhood, if the number of children who become k-ready doesn’t change?)

What I saw was needed was more intentionality about the aspiration and then more rigor regarding the characteristics of achieving that aspiration – that transformative outcome.  We all have weaknesses; it is those of us who focus on the change state that soar above those weaknesses.

That is why, several year ago, I switched to SOART.  Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Resources, and Threats.  In many ways, it is very much the same flipchart process, but by re-defining the headings (i.e., the sight line of the participants) and encouraging iteration across the sheets I witnessed significantly enhanced  discussions. The results have been eye opening.  Not only are the collective sights raised but also the ultimate time to result has shrunk.    

Don’t be naive about your weaknesses, but also, don’t let them limit your expectations. 

A recent comment to a collective impact article -- "...and let all of the skeptics stay at home" -- hit me with a dull thud.  Can you have collective impact with only "true believers?"
     I think not.
     Nor, it seems to me, can you achieve community outcomes with just the agencies, or schools, or hospitals, or funders, or whatever institutions in a community are dedicated to addressing "the problem," on board.  For I'm a believer in the concept that a core requirement to true sustainable outcomes is a change in community expectations and behaviors.  This can't be done by just a few committed souls.  It is for this reason that I think of this work in the on-going (strategic v. tactical) sense of working differently.  There are too many examples of strong, meaningful impact having an innoculation half life of two to three years (see my blog postings on The Cohort Effect and Return on Investment on Early Education for examples in the sphere of education outcomes).  Impact needs to be embedded into the on-going community context -- not just grafted on as a transitory accomplishment.  When we are envisioning community impact, we are required to think of the entire community -- skeptics and all.
     Thus, engagement, full throated, cross-sector, friend and foe embrace is central to achieving collective impact.  It should be the core capacity of any backbone or community support organization.  But often the path of least resistance (see my review of Linchpin) sub-optimizes on the size of the circle.  To get some help thinking about engagement, I went to Daniel H. Pink's new book "To Sell is Human" (which I'll review through a community collaborative lens in the near future). 
     In discussing engagement, Pink says that there are two methods of attempting to get people to act in a concerted way.  The first, practiced in the vast majority of situations is IRRITATION.  Here you are attempting to engage people to do something that WE want them to do.  Think of the vast number of non-profit or corporate endeavors under the guise of engagement, community outreach, listening sessions, where in fact we are presenting the audience with something we have already decided to do and are seeking their assent.  
     According to Pink, the other, less traveled approach to engagement is AGITATION.  Here you are engaging folks by challenging them to do something that THEY want to do.  "Want to" creates much more energy than "have to."  
     This catalytic energy is one of the reasons why all of the Working Differently communities start at the aspirational level.  In essence, coming to a shared aspiration brings us to a shared understanding of what it is we are collectively trying to achieve -- not in narrow provider or programatic language, but in clarity of what's in it for all of us.  It brings the community to the necessary "want to" energy!

Watch Out for Traps!  Despite the Best of Intentions, How Efforts at Working Differently to Achieve Meaningful Community Outcomes Get Derailed

This is the third of three postings regarding "Traps" in achieving community outcomes.  At every community meeting, at every step in the process, we have seen some version of these traps arise and threaten progress. 

Here’s the full list of “traps” that we have encountered.  Over these three entries, I’ve featured a different set of these traps:

o  Let’s Get Comfortable
o  Let’s Put On a Show!
o  We’re Not Ready
o  Oh, That’s Their Problem
o  We Need a New Organization
o  We Need to Collaborate More
o   Data First
o   Money First
o   What If We Get It Wrong?
o   But What Are We Going to Do?

Data First

It is helpful to know where you are now in order to determine where you are going. But if every community effort begins with, “First we have to gather all this data” (do a needs assessment, create an asset map, whatever), it will never get off the ground. For one reason, extensive data tends to "burn through" a lot of volunteer hours and passion, with in the end, very little to show for it (see below).

Put aspirations first, outcomes second, and actions third. As you do the work, the data will follow, and will help you progress toward your outcomes. In the beginning, you won't know what you don't know.  So how do you know what data to look for?  Conversely, as you progress toward outcomes, the data points will be more clear.

Another way to think about this trap (and it again seems counter-intuitive to most of the consultant prescriptions ... remember data collection = billable consultant hours) is to think about your own personal or community history with data.  To gather data you have to have some frame, some way of looking at things.  This frame tends to be the way we have always looked at the problem.  This data tends to be all about telling you where you've been; but very little help in telling you what you need to do differently.  Historically, the actions from this approach tend to be "do (fund) more of the same."  This pleases the status quo, but does very little about "moving the needle" on outcomes.

I would venture to say that upwards of 50% of communities who contact me have undertaken some sort of extensive indicator or benchmark study, that gave them a score of where they stood but very little direction as to what to do about it.     

Money First

So often, we see an opportunity for a grant and try to figure out how we can use it for our purposes. Or we short-circuit our dreams as soon as someone asks, “But how are we going to pay for this?” Be careful not to let money drive the conversation. (Check out my recent post on Funder Intentions in Working Differently Communities).  

The desired outcomes should drive how money is sought and invested. Available money should not drive the activities we try. We know from experience that the communities that are willing to work differently together are much better positioned to get resources. We have seen millions of new dollars come to our Working Differently communities -- from state and federal sources, as well as, foundations (especially corporate foundations) -- primarily because they were working differently and had the outcomes to prove it.  In fact, we have seen in community after community that achieving the outcome is no more expensive then perpetuating the problem. Start with the outcomes, and the money will follow.

It is the zen of Working Differently: don't focus on the money and the money will come!

What If We Get It Wrong?

Every community feels overwhelmed by this process at first. Like people with stage fright, the participants fear that everyone is looking at them and waiting for them to give the right answers. But working at the community level is a process of discovering what we don’t know, not proving how much we do know. Unlike leadership at the organizational level, expertise is not revealed by having the right answers but by asking the right questions. [See: On becoming a “Catalytic Leader” in a forthcoming Tools post] And if you feel people are judging you, invite them to get involved; after all, it’s their community and their responsibility, too.

But What Are We Going to Do?

It is so easy for our brains to jump from “what is the problem?” to “how are we going to fix it?” Everyone wants to know his or her purpose in the process and how existing roles and organizations will be affected. All too often the conversation rushes to action steps before participants are clear about purpose and how to measure success. We’re wary of too much “process” and not enough action.

It’s true that process without action and outcomes is of no value, but actions and outcomes without process won’t succeed. Look at your present community outcomes, if you have any question about that reality.   

Without trust and buy-in, there’s no implementation. Without ever-increasing engagement -- well beyond the usual suspects -- there’s no sense of ownership. Without a solid foundation of community support, there’s no sustainability. The process is much of the enterprise. It allows you to use what you already do, and what you already spend, more effectively and efficiently.  As an example, we have seen communities come to a shared and actionable kindergarten readiness measure and action plan in six months where two-thirds of the time was "process." And conversely, we have seen communities spend little time on process during years where of never coming to that agreement (they still have 10 different definitions of readiness -- at loggerheads with each other) and it remains that fewer than 35% of their children ready.

Process isn’t something to get done as fast as possible; it is the warp through which all the action is woven. 

 When we wrote our book, "Community Visions, Community Solutions" in 2003, we titled our chapter on the delicate role of funders in working differently communities: The Power Delimma.  

In a recent discussion with Tamarack Institute in Canada, they referenced a  briefing paper by Geo Partners which made a series of recommendations to funders regarding their involvement in collective impact efforts. They were broken down into three sections:  starting off strong, bringing the right people to the table at the right time, and implementing smartly.  Keys to starting off strong include:

• Make sure the goals and purpose for convening are clear
• figure out what role you will play
• think of progress incrementally
• be sensitive to the big picture of context and timing

I would add a fifth: their grants can set the agenda for how issues will be addressed within a community.  The requirements that funders attach to their grants can have a significant effect on the way grantees address a problem. We gave an example of how two funders, tackling the same problem with different requirements, elicited very different -- nearly opposite -- responses from their respective communities.  With nearly as divergent results in solving the problem being addressed. 


Our Working Differently experience in achieving community outcomes has almost always found funders collegial and intrigued, but also reticent to fully engage (certainly as a group). More often we see one or two funders around the table and that "checks the box" for funder participation. It would be like in an effort to improve early childhood outcomes to be engaged with just a couple of the broad diversity of early childhood centers or schools in a community.

Where we have seen the most success is where there is clear intentionality on engaging the funder community as there is in engaging any other sector of the community.  Communities often find that they have as many misperceptions about funder roles and motivations as they do about any "new" partner.  As with any community collaborative engagement, you are not gonna get all of any sector from the beginning, but that doesn't mean you don't constantly evaluate yourselves on your outcomes of increasing funder participation over time.

The two cross-currents or "Traps" you are risking by not being intentional in broader funder engagement are: (1) an ownership risk (which I'll talk more about in a future blog) but for purposes here the risk simply stated is that the engagement of a single funder could give the impression that that one funder "owns the process" which we've seen as having on-going negative ramifications to engagement across your community; and (2) the narrowing of funding requirements, that I touched on above, which affect results.

This is the second of three postings regarding "Traps" in achieving community outcomes.  At every community meeting, at every step in the process, we have seen some version of these traps arise and threaten progress. If you keep them in mind, you can see them a mile off and avoid falling into them. 

Here’s the full list of “traps” that we have encountered.  Over these three entries, I’ll feature a different set of these traps:

o  Let’s Get Comfortable
o  Let’s Put On a Show!
o  We’re Not Ready
o   Oh, That’s Their Problem
o   We Need a New Organization
o   We Need to Collaborate More
o   Data First
o   Money First
o   What If We Get It Wrong?
o   But What Are We Going to Do?


Oh, That’s Their Problem

“The Blame Game” [link to Habit #5 in my Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities post] can go both ways—refusing to take responsibility for poor outcomes, or insisting that your organization, sector, or silo “owns” that problem and keeping others out of the effort to solve it.  If you let your citizens believe that your organization owns education or health or economic development, they will fold their arms and say, “Let us know when you succeed.” But these are our problems as an entire community. We all own them together, and we can only solve them together.

We Need a New Organization

Working at the community level does create a work load that someone needs to manage. An organization or an individual leader must commit to convening meetings, preparing handouts, taking notes, reporting back, and convening the next meetings. Successful communities have dedicated staff time to facilitate the process. But the last thing we need to encourage working differently is another organization to feed.

In our 2003 book, "Community Visions, Community Solutions" we called this type of community support a "community support organization."  The recent work on Collective Impact call this effort a "backbone organization."   Both of these conceptualizations envision a stand-alone entity.  But I have seen many communities make great progress at achieving outcomes without the formal establishment of an "organization."  The key is a means for the community to work in this new cross-sector, outcome driven space.  In Erie, PA, for example (www.erietogether.org), Mary Bula holds this space, despite being housed in the United Way and supervised by a partners group from Mercyhurst University, The United Way and a leading community action council: GECAC.  Someday they might form a separate organization, but they didn't dissipate a lot of the community's energy thinking organization, before they though outcomes. 

Don’t assume that a new 501(c)3 will make everything easier. It feels easy, because that has been the standard answer in the past. But it may damage your ability to achieve aspirations, because it will take ownership from the community and put it in the “new, super-duper organization.” This creates an excuse for disengagement. How often have we seen the community metaphorically clap the dust off its hands and say, “Well, that’s done,” and move on to some other equally uneventful activity?

Your desired outcome isn’t to create a new organization but to create a new way of working as a community that balances activities and solutions. Find other ways to get the work done through existing mechanisms.  [link to “A New There” post]

 
We Need to Collaborate More

Whenever we visit communities and ask executives how many collaborative meetings they attend in a month, the average number is 7 or 8 meetings. That’s 7 or 8 different collaborations for different purposes. Now, we’re all about bringing organizations and community members together, so we obviously advocate for collaboration. But no organization can change its structure, processes, and measures [link to “Implementation Kit” in the Tools upcoming posts] 7 or 8 different ways to meet the goals of all these collaborative efforts.

            The problem is that most collaboration occurs around activities and funding, not around outcomes. Communities that are working differently require fewer collaborative groups, because they are no longer building coalitions for each program or funding stream.  Instead, they have begun with the question, “What do we want to accomplish?” and then built an infrastructure to get there. Collaboration occurs in order to achieve the outcomes that everyone has agreed on together. This creates a fundamentally different way of organizing work and, therefore, of organizing how we all work together.

            How do you know if you are engaged in worthwhile collaboration? Check out this tool and test yourselves. [link to “Collaboration” in an upcoming Tools post]

At every community meeting, at every step in the process, we have seen some version of these traps arise and threaten progress. If you keep them in mind, you can see them a mile off and avoid falling into them. Even better, we’ve seen communities where, at every meeting, they designate someone to be “Sergeant At Arms” who will point out when such traps emerge and help everyone steer clear.

Here’s the full list of “traps” that we have encountered.  Over the next week or so, in three entries, I’ll feature a different set of these traps:

o  Let’s Get Comfortable
o  Let’s Put On a Show!
o  We’re Not Ready
o   Oh, That’s Their Problem
o   We Need a New Organization
o   We Need to Collaborate More
o   Data First
o   Money First
o   What If We Get It Wrong?
o   But What Are We Going to Do?

Let’s Get Comfortable

Working differently isn’t easy because it isn’t what we’re used to doing. Whenever community groups meet, they must be constantly on alert not to let discomfort pull them away from the new approach. This is especially a risk with people who are joining the effort mid-stream and may try to devolve the conversation back into an approach with which they are comfortable. You want folks to join the process continually, BUT be sure to orient newcomers appropriately [see earlier blog posting on “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities” for more detail on this concept of on-going orientation], and designate participants in each meeting to be the watchdogs or guards who will point out when the conversation is falling back on old, bad habits.

If every other community meeting your members are likely to attend, is focused on the old way of thinking about problems – single-sector activities, scarcity, ideology, blame – it is no surprise that there is a natural inertia in that direction and away from the more successful outcome focus of Working Differently.  We’ve seen where communities have posted their “values” and “method of operation” or take a few minutes at the beginning of each meeting reminding folks that this is a different way of working. (See upcoming “Tools” posts for examples.) 

This is also a real value provided by the community support organization or backbone organization [see earlier blog posting on "Creating the New There." for more detail on this concept of someplace in the community having a catalytic focus on the end result -- the community outcome].

Another derivative of this trap is a long-drawn out process of TRUST Building.  We’ve seen some efforts derailed for years while some well-meaning funder pays for trust building exercises.  (And most consultants are more than willing to prescribe this easy source of consultant-billing).  We have yet to see where this artificial trust is maintained in the face of the hard decisions required to develop a shared definition of the outcome and a meaningful measure.  At best, they are the community equivalent of gathering around the campfire to sing "Kumbaya."  (It's perhaps pleasant once a year, but would be mind-numbing as a sole activity.)  Success comes from jumping right into the central question – what outcome do we want? – and build trust around acting and not falsely around preparing to act.

Let’s Put On a Show!

When we aren’t sure what to do, we can easily fall back on familiar strategies like creating a new program, hosting a conference, holding a fundraiser. But we shouldn’t propose any actions until we know what the outcomes are, and then we should test those actions to measure if they are, in fact, getting us to those outcomes. When we are ready to decide how to reach the outcomes, we should begin with what we already know is working, rather than grasping at new ideas just because they are new. Achieve results from respecting and aligning the work of the community, not covering over the old system with one more layer of programs.  (We'll cover this more fully in future posts.)

We’re Not Ready

Even when we are inspired by the idea of working differently, it may feel like too much, too fast for some communities. Or certain organizations perceived to be critical to success may not feel ready to participate. But if we aren’t ready now – when our kids and elders need help, when families are in distress, when our environment is degrading – when will we be ready? Don’t get held up because some people won’t get engaged right away; some folks won’t take time to get involved until you have some actions to show them.  As we talk about in the earlier “Seven Habits” post, make sure there is always an empty chair at your working differently community meetings for whenever folks are ready to join, BUT we don’t have the luxury to wait.  Get moving. NOW! [link to Habit #2 from the blog post: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities.]

When Michael Bromberg moved to Illinois and became dean of Benedictine University of Springfield, he wanted to get involved in the community in order to learn about his new home town, to bring greater awareness to the university, and to seek stronger connections between his institution and others in town. He was grateful to discover Springfield’s “Continuum of Learning” as a doorway into his community. Unlike in most cities, he found a central place to connect with various community leaders in all sectors around a shared purpose related to his goals.

One of the greatest obstacles to improving our communities is that there’s no there there. When policy makers, potential funders, or new leaders come to town, they cannot find an entry point that connects them to the community as a whole. Should they go to the chamber of commerce? The mayor’s office? The community foundation? A service club? Each of these will connect them with certain segments of the community, but none can offer the bigger picture or a wide-ranging network of other leaders.

The infrastructure of most communities is a web of organizations. This web is valuable, but it must be balanced with a capacity to think and work at the community level. While most of us can point to plans that were made at the community level in the past, we have tried to implement them at the fragmentary level of organizations, and we are, not surprisingly, disheartened by the lack of results.

When community members get involved with social challenges, they do so as volunteers or board members for individual organizations committed to particular activities and programs. As a result, the community’s strengths – resources, decision making, accountability, and engagement – are all placed on the side of the scale that takes action (whether or not those actions are solving problems). By creating a new working space at the community level, we can tip the scale to bring more resources, decision making, accountability, and engagement to our overall goals and outcomes. We then have a way to target our strengths toward solutions, not just tasks.

[Figure One: a scale showing imbalance with focus on activities (almost all the weights are on that side of the scale right now) and little focus on outcomes (almost no weights on that side of the scale)]

Community enterprises need to be managed; they need a community-level infrastructure. Again, this does not mean creating a new organization [see upcoming blog post re Traps to Working Differently for Community Outcomes]. What it does mean is that some individuals – no matter where they are employed – are charged by the community to hold the center [link to Habit #3 in blog post on "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities] and act on behalf of the community.

Erie, Pennsylvania community leaders decided to hire Mary Bula to direct its Erie Together Coalition. She is housed in the United Way, but her charge is to keep people working differently at the community level to reach Erie’s aspirations (which are related to education and economics). Mary says that all participants in this community-wide effort “have to be willing to look at what is in the best interests of children and community instead of where the money is coming from. I’m still trying to get folks to think about community rather than self. I just keep pointing out our true job – equitable opportunity for every child. We have to look at what the community needs.” She is holding the center, and she holds open the door to community-level connections.

We know that policy makers and funders want to work more at the community level but say they have no place to go. With this new infrastructure in place, they will know who to call to get connected with the community. They will find a new there there.

We have learned that some things are absolutely required to truly work differently as a community and, therefore, achieve your goals. These are the irreducible minimums for success. Think of them as the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities.”

1. Reach for It

2. Go With Who Ya Got

3. Hold the Center

4. Keep the Circle Open

5. Avoid the Blame Game

6. Choose Measurable Outcomes

7. Develop a Sense of Urgency & Keep Going

1. Reach for It!

We have yet to work with a community that chooses a higher aspiration than is doable. Every community under-aspires, probably because they have felt defeated so many times in the past. They walk around with the heavy weight of “We’re never going to fix this problem.” Plus they feel they need to keep the aspiration “manageable” in order to please everyone. It’s no wonder they find it hard to reach for the sky.

Know this: High expectations are not unrealistic. You actually can create a great community where all residents thrive to their best ability. Setting a high aspiration inspires the process. It may feel beyond your reach at the beginning, but no one wants to make the effort to work differently for a modest goal.

As your community engages in a process to develop its aspirations, keep focused on the highest common denominator, not the lowest. Don’t we all want smart, capable kids? Strong, healthy families? Fulfilling jobs for all our residents? A joyous, beautiful community in which to grow old? Then let’s say so. And mean it. And reach for it.

Take the “Why Test”

2.  Go With Who Ya Got

So often we hesitate to make decisions when certain key players aren’t participating. We let them control the conversation by their very absence. Instead of waiting for or worrying about their opinions, keep the aspirations front and center, make decisions based on that, and keep the wheels rolling forward. When the absentees see the exciting places you are headed, they will want to jump on the bus.

The key is to place a higher value on achieving the outcome than on deferring to those who are supposedly “in charge” of that outcome. If they alone were truly in charge, would it be the issue that it has become?

3. Hold the Center

Your aspiration becomes the center of your community’s new way of working. You need it to direct your subsequent work, and you can’t live without it when the going gets rough.

"Like the core of a planet, a clear, strong sense of purpose creates the gravitational pull that will bring people, effort, resources, and commitments to the process."

Your aspiration becomes your mantra. The more your repeat it, the more you will believe it. It is posted at every meeting. It appears at the top of every handout and press release. It is incorporated into the logo for your community’s website. It is your guide.

             It is also the beginning and end of every conversation. When self-interested objections arise, or people go on the defensive, or old ways of doing things threaten progress, the aspiration reminds people of what must come first. It is hard to work at the level of community, instead of as representatives of our jobs. But we must continually hold onto that unfamiliar place and plant our feet firmly at that center where we all want the same things, where our aspiration calls us to our higher selves.

The aspiration statement allows you to talk about measurable actions. Without a clear aspiration, courtesy will always trump impact. No one wants to refuse funding to a favorite organization or question the value of a long-time community leader’s work. But without clarity on the goal and the measurements, we reinforce too many people for what they do and not for the results they achieve. However, with that clarity, those favorite organizations and stalwart leaders can see how they can align their work to help achieve the goal—and how to prove the difference they are making.

            By starting the community conversation with aspirations, we also inoculate ourselves from the harm of disrupters. Community members have feared the disruptive tactics of certain individuals who have derailed past efforts. But when the community started with such a clear picture of the goal ahead, they gave disrupters no opportunity to wreak havoc. We have heard people reflect, “So-and-so has always been so difficult before, but in these sessions they’re not.”

By holding the center, we maintain our neutrality about the activities or programs and remain committed to the outcome. It’s not that activities and programs are not important – they are how we get things done – but they are valuable only to the extent that they get us to the outcome. Even the value of collaborating must be tested against progress on outcomes. Collaboration [link to “trap” on collaboration] to gain funding or create programs can be useful, but it must be designed first and foremost around what we want to accomplish.

4. Keep the Circle Open

A community effort must be just that—the work of the whole community. While you can’t force anyone to participate, you absolutely cannot keep out anyone who wants in. This is an inclusive process that takes everyone’s perspectives into consideration but is not held hostage by any one idea or agenda.

            The circle is kept open through communication, invitation, and orientation:

Communication

Every step in the process should be documented and publicly posted on the web. Regular press releases to local media may also keep the effort in the public consciousness. The process will not be a smooth, linear success, and open communication will reveal missteps, re-dos, and changes of direction, but that’s okay. It shows how seriously you are taking this and how deliberately you are working to do it right.

Invitation

Every report, news article, and web page should include information about where and when the next meetings will be held and an open invitation for anyone to attend. You should also make personal invitations to people whose knowledge or expertise would be a valuable addition at each point in the process.

Orientation

New people won’t be used to working in new ways and will need to be caught up on what has happened so far. If they aren’t well oriented to thinking and working differently, to understanding how and why certain decisions have already been made, they will likely drag the conversation backward or in directions that reflect old ways of thinking. This is frustrating for previous participants and slows down the process.

Of course, newcomers’ questions should be answered, and they should be made to feel welcome. But the best strategy for keeping them from derailing the process is to get them up to speed before the meeting.

Plan on perpetual orientation as part of working differently. [pull quote] Phone conversations, materials to read, and half-hour pre-meeting orientations for newcomers are all helpful. Tell them your story, and when you get to the present, add them as a character. Then they can be full participants who will carry forward the process in their own valuable ways.

5. Avoid the Blame Game

Communities have a long history of not reaching their goals. It is easy to point fingers at who isn’t pulling his weight or doing her job. But the blame game only hurts; it never helps. In fact, usually we blame what is most susceptible to the broader failings of the community—the very institutions that are dependent on us as citizens for their achievement. It is the classic lesson of the pointed finger that has three fingers pointing back at ourselves.

We’ve yet to run into any malicious person who doesn’t want everyone to prosper. The ineffective systems we have are not caused by evil people trying to create hurdles. They are the result of all our good intentions put into action without clarity and rigor about what those good intentions will achieve.

Thus, blaming schools for failed outcomes, for example, is our way of avoiding our community responsibility for those outcomes. This new way of working asks everyone to take responsibility for success, so everyone is accountable. “Their children” become “our children.” “Those schools” become “our schools.”

6. Choose Measurable Outcomes

When Nisa Hensley, a Duke Energy executive in Shelby, Indiana, began participating in her community’s new way of working, she shared this realization: 

 “For success in real estate, the one guideline is ‘location, location, location.’ For community solutions, it should be ‘outcome, outcome, outcome.’”

Once you have agreed on what you want to achieve, you must determine how you will know when you’ve achieved it. Like stepping on the scale every morning, measurable outcomes are your guideposts for progress.

They need to be specific and measurable with clarity about how they will be measured:

·      95% of third graders read at grade level as measured by such-and-such test (e.g. NEAP).

·      90% of high school graduates attain at least an associates degree or trades certification within four years    of graduation.

·      95% of families move out of poverty as defined by such-and-such calculator.

·      90% of all residents report getting regular exercise as measured by local survey.

·      No more than five days a year does the air pollution measure exceed such-and-such level.

·      75% of vacant land within the city boundary is repurposed within ten years.

After you have your community aspirations, no other decisions should come before the outcomes, because when you get clear on the outcomes, the next questions – what should we do? how should we do it? who should do it? how can we pay for it? – become much easier to answer.

If we spend money to help send first-generation low-income students to college, but only 19% of them graduate (as is currently true in the state of Indiana), we haven’t invested that money very wisely. But if we commit to an outcome of 80% of first-generation students graduating from college (a commitment made in Grant County, Indiana), we will invest appropriately in the supports needed to help students succeed once they get there.

Sometimes we hesitate to choose outcomes because we worry they aren’t the right ones to measure, or that some good things cannot be measured. But if we are going to do the right thing for our future, we have to abandon the shifting ground and focus on what we can prove. As we learn more, we might decide to move to a different plateau, but we need some permanent measures to begin mapping our progress.

7. Develop a Sense of Urgency & Keep Going

If your community’s goals are worth aspiring to, they are worth invoking a sense of urgency. Each day, month, or year that passes without progress on the outcomes means more children, families, or opportunities are permitted to languish.

"Even so, working differently as a community is not a short-term project. It is not a new program. It is a long-term strategy."

When someone starts a new company, the entrepreneur never thinks, “Well, I hope I can do this quickly and get it over with.” It is just as absurd to think that way about solving community problems. Creating a healthy community is on ongoing commitment with an indefinite timeline. Like a successful company, you should want it to last and last, because it means you are succeeding at working at the community level. This doesn’t mean you can’t see quick results on certain outcomes, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep the momentum rolling. But you should embrace it as a new way of operating from now on.

 In "Scenes of America," describing a post-Katrina resolve, Walter Isaacson explodes the imagination and deftly brings logic to a chaos of emotions that New Orleans has always triggered for me by using a word (perhaps best recognized as the title of Lillian Hellman's autobiography): pentimento.

Pentimento refers to the reappearance in painting of an underlying image that has been painted over. For me, my first experience with this effect was on a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago and on first seeing Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist. Far more powerful for me than the slightly deformed looking man was the mysterious image of a woman painted underneath. I always placed more faith in the artist's intent as being more than simply recycling a cheap panel ... her haunting eyes visible just above the line formed by the guitarist's arthritic neck gave power and rebirth to this bent man. The new and transcendent was in fact the old and transitorily covered. Like The Old Guitarist, in Issacson's passion, New Orleans is our cultural pentimento where rich and textured will never be covered by safe and homogeneity. In remaking itself, New Orleans is as it was and never will be.

I think this dualism of never and always is best described in one of my favorite poems. There is no doubt Wallace Stevens was ruminating on Picasso when he wrote "Man with the Blue Guitar." Here is the opening stanza which in many ways is why I see the work I do in communities to encourage them to work differently -- not unlike New Orleans -- as "my blue guitar!"


The Man With the Blue Guitar
Wallace Stevens

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

And they said to him, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves...,